Main menu

Skyscrapers for grain elevators, and canola fields for a river valley

In the last two weeks, I kept having minor, five-minute freakouts. They were based on the fact that I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, quitting my newspaper job, accepting a new job in communications, and moving to Edmonton. Usually the calming factor was a mix of old text messages from friends and just talking to friends, but still, a five-minute freakout is a five-minute freakout.

All things considered then, this week has gone very smoothly. I moved some of my stuff last Saturday — my parents are coming to help me move the rest of it this weekend, and while I am very, very grateful that they’ll drive 12 hours round-trip to do so, I am incredibly worried, with good reason, that they’re going to drive me up the wall in less than 48 hours. I started my new job yesterday, which is in communications, and that’s about all I’m going to say about that. Working at a newspaper I think gives you a lot of transparency; other organizations and jobs, less so. The first day was a lot of settling in and little odds and ends, but I think and hope it’s going to go well. I’m excited, anyways.

I’ve still got a lot of settling in to do — like I said, I’m still moving this weekend, and you don’t realize how much you use/miss furniture until you don’t have any and drink your morning coffee sitting on the kitchen counter. Or put the phone down while talking to your best friend so you can hop up on said kitchen counter to take a seat. I’m also looking forward to two weekends from now, when I should be able to start going to yoga again (and there’s an outdoor pool super, super close to my apartment, even though the lane swim times are kind of crappy). Little things, but important.

I know a couple of people here already, and I’ve got some plans to get involved in a couple of things that I hope will lead to more friends. After all, I don’t plan on moving cities again for a very long time. And while motivation is part of it, I also think it might be easier to convince myself to take a risk and get involved in some activities, because my job no longer defines me. Yes, it’s something I do for many hours a week and I want to be passionate and excited about it, but at the end of the day, I get to go home, throw on a pair of sweats and do whatever I want. And so far, I have the energy to do things after work, like making dinner, instead of just curling up on the couch and not moving until bedtime. The nature of the industry means I still have to be flexible, but I think less so than a small-town journalist.

Taking the risk was scary, I won’t lie. Technically, driving back and forth from Edmonton to Lloyd was more of an inconvenience (although gas adds up) than anything else, when I wanted to be part of an event. Technically, I could have continued to live there and commute to Edmonton. I had an interesting job; two days a week I was hardly in the office, two days were also production and the rest just fell into place. But it was time for a change, and like I said, I think I’ll be glad I took the risk.

Someone mentioned to me that they had seen the job posting for the job I’m now currently in, and decided not to apply for it, as they would have to move out of the city. Fair enough. I’m OK with the fact that to get the experience I want, and to get to where I want to go, I might have to find alternative solutions that aren’t perfect. Example: there were a lot of ups and downs to living in Lloyd. But I strangely made some really good friends, and I think living there without them would have been absolutely horrible. Plus I learned some lessons in Lloyd that I don’t think I would have been able to learn in Calgary. For whatever I learned, I’m glad.

Having those five minutes of panic where I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing was not pleasant, though I don’t really see any way around it — that’s the way my brain works, and I’m young enough and enough of a perfectionist that I’m going to question myself, on decisions like those and even smaller decisions.

But things work out, as the friends in Lloyd show. Not in the way you expect, or where you expect, but I think it works out. So now I’ll hold my breath a little bit here, until things really start to work out.